Penguin

Yesterday, I listened to a lecture called Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirkey. It mainly dealt with the question of how we could use what he calls the "cognitive surplus", or spare time and effort that we can put toward anything from creating high art to watching TV.

At one point, the discussion focused on Twitter, and how some people decry it as a symptom of the death of "proper" communication. Shirkey made an argument for the opposite that I found interesting. ...

In the process of doing some research for discussions I was having about the recent protests over Muslim prayer in a Toronto school, I was perusing the Ontario Education Act when I came across these gems:

Provisions Relating to Public Boards

[...]
Same
(3) A member of the clergy may visit a public school in the area where the member has pastoral charge. 1997, c. 31, s. 27.

Duties
Duties of teacher
264. (1) It is the duty

...

With a Canadian federal election just a few days away, I thought I would do a blog post about the role religion has played in the platforms of the parties and the campaigns so far. However, when I went looking for the religion on the campaign trail, I discovered that it was barely to be found.

All the party leaders have had the obligatory photo-ops at various religious events, but these - such as Ignatieff and Layton's appearances at the Sikh Khalsa Day parade in Toronto - seemed to ...

So... this evening at the mall, I was approached by a guy who really wanted two things: to find out what I thought happened when we die, and to give me a pamphlet entitled "The Final Judgement".

I'm normally a pretty laid-back guy, but I got mad at him. Really mad. Our conversation started with me obviously pissed off and went downhill from there. It finally ended with me telling him that I'd go get mall security if he wouldn't leave me alone.

I can chalk some ...

Okay... I'm generally opposed to the idea that we have a taxpayer-funded religious school system in my province, but a couple of specific things have been really bugging me lately.

First: when we got our property tax assessment, there was a new form inside... something like this (not my school board's form, but similar). Here's what it's for:

• legally, property taxes from non-Catholics can't go to Catholic schools. This includes cases where a property is jointly owned by a

...

Updated 02-18-2010 at 02:52 PM by Penguin

Tags: atheists, catholic schools, ontario, taxes, voting

Categories

‎ Atheism , ‎ Christianity , ‎ Religion